Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Grant, Lee, and Modern Political Discourse

Posted
Peace in Union (Thomas Nast)
Peace in Union (Thomas Nast)

At dawn on April 9, 1865, there was a small battle near the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, representing the Confederate States of America, attacked and forced back the United States of America’s Union lines. About 500 Confederate and 164 Union soldiers were killed or wounded in the skirmish.

But after reaching the crest of a ridge, Confederate soldiers saw thousands and thousands of Union troops lined up for battle. It was immediately clear to everybody present that the Confederates were doomed. The tattered and tired Army of Northern Virginia, with about 28,000 troops, faced about 100,000 well-rested and well-fed soldiers from the Union Armies of the Potomac, the James, and the Shenandoah.

General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, resigned himself to defeat. “Then there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant and I would rather die a thousand deaths.”

Lee sent word to General Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Army of the Potomac, that he wished to meet to discuss surrender. They corresponded for some time, establishing a cease fire and choosing the Appomattox Court House home of Wilmer McLean as the location for their meeting.

Read more . . .

Trump Now the Presumptive Republican Nominee

Posted

Real-estate mogul Donald Trump (R) is now the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee. Although Trump has yet to attain the necessary 1,237 delegates to the Republican National Convention, his last two opponents—Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Governor John Kasich (R-OH)—suspended their campaigns after Trump’s landslide win in Tuesday’s Indiana primary.

The meteoric rise of Trump—a brash, center-left outsider with virtually no connection the Republican Party machine—has baffled political observers in the United States and abroad. His campaign has successfully tapped into widespread popular frustration both within and outside of the Republican Party, particularly revolving around illegal immigration and the economy. He has received more primary votes than any Republican candidate in history, a statistic partly driven by his ability to draw new voters into the primary process. Many Trump supporters had never voted in a presidential primary before.

Trump is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization, a ninety-three year old conglomerate with interests in—among other things—real estate, investing, and property management. It is composed of more than five hundred subsidiaries, the majority of which are named for Trump. The Trump Organization is based in New York City and employs about 22,000 people. It is owned entirely by the Trump family. Forbes Magazine estimates that Trump’s net worth is about $4.5 billion.

The Trump Organization also owns a television production company that produces The Apprentice for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Trump himself starred in the show from 2004 to 2015. It now stars former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA).

The Trump Candidacy: Time To Eat My Hat

Posted

Donald Trump (by Michael Vadon [CC BY-SA 2.0])
Donald Trump (by Michael Vadon [CC BY-SA 2.0])
When real-estate mogul Donald Trump entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination, I, like most political observers, dismissed him as having no chance of winning.

I knew that his opportunistic populism would resonate with part of the party, especially given how tone-deaf it has been to its own conservative base in the last several presidential cycles, so I did not completely write him off. In fact I hoped that his blunt talk would influence the other candidates to deviate from their scripts and engage in some real, genuine, uninhibited debate about the future of the party and the nation.

Initially, I thought the most-likely Republican nominee was Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) . . . but his campaign imploded surprisingly early. Former technology executive Carly Fiorina (R) seemed like a possibility as well, but her campaign also disintegrated after a brief flare. Then for much of the early phase of the race I thought it would eventually settle on Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) as a reasonable compromise between the conservative base and the old-guard party elites, and although Rubio held out until the final four, he also fizzled.

And then I thought for sure that the party would rally behind Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), an outsider and ‘tea party’ favorite who is not well-liked by the old guard, but who has proven his leadership chops (love him or hate him) and has helped move the Congress in a more un-apologetically conservative direction.

All along, I thought that Trump’s apparent success was an illusion.

Read more . . .

April Fools Site: Endorsing Calvin Coolidge

Posted
Updated

For April Fools Day 2016, Off on a Tangent officially endorsed the reelection of President Calvin Coolidge in the 1924 presidential election . . . because that was way more fun than considering the sorry bunch that are actually running in 2016. The site was emblazoned with Coolidge advertisements and included the endorsement article front-and-center.

You can view the site in all its glory by clicking here, or just read on for the content of the endorsement itself.

Read more . . .

Obama to Nominate Merrick Garland to Supreme Court

Posted
Judge Merrick Garland
Judge Merrick Garland

President Barack Obama (D) will nominate Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the District of Columbia Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, to the United States Supreme Court.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Garland would replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died of natural causes last month. This would shift the ideological makeup of the court; Scalia was a right-wing conservative firebrand, while Garland is generally regarded as a moderate or center-left judge.

Garland was first nominated to the D.C. Circuit by President Bill Clinton (D) in 1995, but the Senate did not act on the nomination at that time. After Clinton’s reelection in 1996, he re-nominated Garland, who was then confirmed in March of 1997 by a bipartisan 76-23 vote.

This appointment sets up a clash with Republican leaders in the Senate, who have promised not to act on any Supreme Court nomination until after the 2016 presidential election. The U.S. Constitution, however, charges the Senate with providing the president with its “advice and consent” on judicial nominations, and whether inaction constitutes “advice and consent” remains an unanswered legal question.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.